This came up as a discussion in the BIM Discussion Group and I thought it might be best to separate it as a topic. The need for adding and editing SectionCuts in Layout is a big workflow issue and would be a huge time saver for everybody that needs to create plans.
Without breaking the bank this should be possible. I created a Mockup for this. I know - Trimble didn’t ask me and likely won’t listen, but here I go anyway.
Part One: Using ONLY THE FUNCTIONS ALREADY THERE we could improve Layout by us being able
to select which section cuts (from the model) should be visible as a CutLine in a viewport for printing
how these cutlines should be displayed.
Allow a function to create a viewport that is in the same view-direction as the section cut.
This would not need any changes to the way Sketchup / Layout works - it’s just “helper” tools and an overlay of the SectionCut Lines
Part Two: Two new LayoutTools that create (LayoutNative?) SectionCutLines that are attached to a viewport. It’s a line with a direction. It will create a linked viewport to that line that can be further edited.
I love this simply because it a nicely performed Layout Upgrade explanation.
So am I correct that you want to create a section cut in Sketchup from Layout? If so, does that also create the scene?
I love the Detail-View Tool!! Radical and would be a great time saver. Can I have that one right now please?
It seems like you are recommending (assumed for sure) that the Layout “SketchUp Panel” be renamed to “Viewport Control Panel” where all options for viewports can be controlled. Adding section cuts, assigning visibility, layers and tags to the viewport could be new additions to that panel. Incorrect assessment?
a. This would address my long term ask for some kind of SKU Outliner control in Layout. When using the Outliner in SketchUp, Section Cuts can be assigned at any scene. If that attribute was made available at the Viewport Control Panel (I like it better than the sketchup panel so im using it) we could then do a crazy thing and permanently establish 5 scenes, one for each native view. We can then establish 5 standardized viewports already populated inside our Layout template, each with one of those scenes already selected. The user could then use the Viewport Control Panel to create/assign the needed section cut and the user has, dare I say, completely replace the SketchUp scene building and Layout assignment process with a simple and intuitive alternative within Layout.
Would a section cut line be hotlinked/reference to the viewport that shows the elevation or plan or detail? This would be a great feature and would be doubly great if the link transferred to pdf.
when creating this I basically tried to put myself into the minds of the Sketchup Team. We can all have our little pipe-dreams but anything that would break current functions or that is too heavy to implement will never happen anyway. So I tried to figure out: what could Sketchup do with the current core functions (SectionCuts are part of the Sketchup Model) if we get more Layout Modifieres (Part One). After that I tried to imagine what we could do if we added some actual SectionCut functionality to the Layout Side. I’d be super happy with Part One already, but Part 2 would of course really rock. As @JQL pointed out in a different post the SectionCut functionality in Sketchup is important not only for Layout but also for studying details in Sketchup itself so this function should always remain in Sketchup, too.
To answer your questions:
In an ideal world it would not need to create a scene. The Cut already has a direction, everything else (style, ortho, scale, tags) can be modified in the ViewportControlPanel.
That name change would make a lot of sense to me. And yes - in the end the more you can control here the less redundant scenes do you have to set up in Sketchup
I think this is a great suggestion. It’s a nice idea indeed to give control to Lay-Out purely from a documentation point of view, which is what Lay-Out is about anyway. You model in SU, then you document in LO.
(EDIT: after posting it, I noticed that while writing some previously posted answers are basically alluding to the same principle I was trying to write up below , anyway I’ll just leave the text below maybe it helps to finetune what’s already said!)
I could imagine an option in Layout where you perhaps don’t even have to refer to an SU section cut, but you just determine the documentation cut in LO.
As usual you start with a reference to the model, and then in LO you define a section based on the following input (or by snapping on points/vertices the model with the normal move/rotate tools):
Angle of the section through the model, referenced to the model axis (B/G/R);
View direction of the cut (flip checkbox)
Coordinate 1: the cut
Coordinate 2: end of the cut view
The rest would just be normal LO stuff, viewport size, scale, tags, styles, etc.
If you want another cut, you can copy it, and just play with the input/coordinates to have another section moving/rotating along any desired axis whether elevation, plan or other.
This also solves the issue of not messing up all your LO viewports by accidentally ‘updating’ an SU Scene that slightly moved or zoomed. As long as your model is in the same position, all the sections in LO remain constant as they refer to the same coordinates.
PS.
Maybe a ‘center-coordinate’ could be assigned also to this ‘LO-section’, so that when you create a duplicate that you’d like to use for a more detailed section/detail, it automatically centers on the right point when changing scale and we don’t have to endlessly resize and drag viewports to show a different part of the section. But maybe there’s already a better way of doing this that I am unaware of.
And now imagine if they combined it with this Proposal of mine from a few years ago. With “Render-Materials” they unfortunately showed us that they CAN add additional datafields to a material if they want to. Now why not add one for “section fill”. You did manage to add “bump map”, after all? (pants excitedly)…
I think I need some air! Too many dreams in one morning.
But then… it’s such an easy change because… almost nothing has to change to do this… we have color by tag / material… why not hatch by… tag / material? And while we’re at it… lineweight by… tag / material… Curic manages to do this, the only downside is that it’s not vector.
That only leaves redundant lines in between adjacent groups/surfaces when they have the same tag/material that on a plan would be ‘one shape’. But I’m sure that’s fixable
